Today is Africa Malaria Day - 24 hours to commemorate the fact that the world has learned to live with malaria. It has always been around, affecting the celebrated and famous, including Alexander the Great, Henry VIII and EastEnders' Ross Kemp.

And the cost of our tolerance of this disease? One death every 30 seconds. Well over a million people die from malaria each year. Children are the main victims, particularly in Africa, where the disease accounts for 20% of childhood deaths.

But the true horror is that malaria is a curable and largely preventable disease. Bringing malaria into the classroom, so to speak, is a timely reminder that quiet acceptance of this disease shouldn't be an option for global citizens.

Compare and contrast

Ascertain your students' knowledge of malaria by playing odd-one-out with three diseases, such as malaria, Aids and flu. Encourage them to consider symptoms, how they are caught, how they are spread, whom they affect, where they are, curability, and so on. Look at the links between the diseases. Begin to share understandings and misconceptions.

Although 80% of deaths from malaria occur in Africa, each year there are up to 500m cases of the disease throughout the world, mainly in the tropics. Rather than just distributing a map or list, ask students to investigate where malaria occurs. The World Malaria Report provides an interactive world map (www.rbm.who.int/wmr2005/). Younger students can use this to colour in their own map (www. eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/world_country.pdf), while older students can create their own report, summarising the countries worst affected in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Life cycle

Once they have grasped the big picture, they can begin to explore the detail. Malaria is transmitted by the anopheles mosquito. The plasmodium parasite, which causes the infection, requires both humans and mosquitoes to complete its complicated but successful life cycle. Ask younger students to produce a multimedia presentation, using text, images and sound, on the life of the mosquito. A good starting place for their research is science.howstuffworks.com/mosquito1.htm. Older students can also do a multimedia presentation, but one that explains the life cycle of the plasmodium parasite. Challenge them to use technology (animation in PowerPoint, hyperlinks) to make the process accessible to the audience. Sites that will provide information and ideas for presentation include www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/224/Malaria.html and www.sumanasinc.com/scienceinfocus/plasmodium/plasmodium_fla.html.

Prevention

With some understanding of the disease, they can begin to look at prevention and treatment of malaria. While there is no vaccine, there are effective preventative measures. Insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets, to protect beds, could drastically reduce the number of deaths of children, in particular, if they were affordable and properly used (www.rbm.who.int/cmc_upload/0/000/015/368/RBMInfosheet_5.htm ).

Roll Back Malaria (RBM) is a partnership of organisations seeking to raise awareness of the problems and to halve the number of cases by 2010. The plasmodium parasite is growing resistant to conventional drugs. A new group of anti-malarials, artemisinin and its derivatives, is highly effective but expensive to produce, although scientists are working on ways to produce it more cheaply. Younger students can design a set of stamps that support the work of RBM (http://rbm.who.int/docs/rbm_brochure.pdf), while older students can design stamps to celebrate the advances in science relating to malaria (www.malariasite.com/malaria/History.htm).

Game plan

Finally, students can invent a board game that highlights their knowledge of malaria and helps to inform others about this killer disease. It might be a simple snakes and ladders type game, or a quiz. The point is to evaluate their understanding of what can alleviate and exacerbate the suffering of those affected by malaria. Play the internet game Malaria Chase (www.impact-malaria.com/EN/GP/index.asp). Although the level of knowledge required is quite advanced, it should stimulate their own ideas for a game. The Malaria Site will give them plenty of facts and figures to make their game of interest (www.malariasite.com/index.htm.